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I am working on an API definition and design guide for my human services API work, helping establish a framework for approaching API design as part of the human services data and API specification, but also for implementers to follow in their own individual deployments. Every time I work on the subject of API design, I’m reminded of how far behind the API sector is when it comes to standardizing what it is we do.

Every month or so I see a new company publicly share their API design guide. When they do, my friend Arnaud always adds to his API Stylebook, adding it to the wealth of information available in his work. I’m happy to see each API design guide release, but in reality, all API providers should have an API design guide, and they should also be open to publishing it publicly, showing their consumers they have their act together, and sharing with the wider API community the best practices in play.

The lack of companies sharing their API design practices and their API definitions is why we have such a deficiency when it comes to common API patterns in use. It is why we have so many variations of web APIs, as well as the underlying schema. We have an API industry because early practitioners like SalesForce, Amazon, eBay, Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, Youtube, and others were open with their API operations. People emulate what they see and know. Each wave of the API sector depends on the previous wave sharing what they do publicly–it is how this all works.

To demonstrate even further about how deficient we are, I do not find companies sharing their guides for API deployment, management, testing, monitoring, clients, and other stops along the API lifecycle. I’m glad we are seeing an uptick in the number of API design guides, but we need this practice to spread to every other stop. We need successful providers to share how they deploy their APIs, and when any company hires a new developer, you should ALWAYS be given a standard guide for deploying, managing, testing, as well as designing APIs.

It’s not rocket science, and honestly, it’s not even technical. It just means pausing for a moment, thinking about how we approach each stop in the API lifecycle, writing up an overview, publishing, and sharing it with API stakeholders, and even the wider API community. Every company doing APIs in 2017 should be crafting an API design guide so you can get to work on guides for the other areas of your lifecycle, thinking through and standardizing your approach, and making it known to every person involved–ideally, you are also being very public about all of this, and sharing your work with me and Arnaud, so we can get the word out about the good stuff you are up to!

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